I don’t know why my friends say that I hate change. In a single decade I went from disdaining dahlias to wanting a border full of colorful specimens.
I grew dahlias this year with that aim in mind. I was egged on by gorgeous garden magazines spreads featuring gardeners who are able to grow armloads of dahlias, even in less than optimal conditions. Those magazine dahlias flourish in Scottish coastal gardens where the wind is 25 miles per hour on a dead calm day. They apparently also flourish in Tasmania and Washington State.
They have not exactly flourished in my garden, though if it stays warm and sunny through the end of January, I may just have a bumper crop.
Why has this happened? I will start with factors—other than my gardening skills—that may be to blame. This year in New Jersey we had so much rain that some people probably contemplated building arks. The ground was saturated about half the time and rain threatened three days out of four. This was great for lawn grass, hydrangeas and other thirsty specimens. It was not good for dahlias, which are native to sunny Mexico and parts of Central America. I am sure that my dahlias would have flowered sooner if they could have found the sunshine they needed. Certainly their stalks grow tall and gangly as the plants reached for the infrequent watery sunshine.
All the plant tags, reference books and websites tell you that dahlias prefer free-draining soil. I amended my clay-laden dirt with organic material to help the drainage, but saturated soil means that the water has nowhere to go. I am fortunate that my dahlia tubers did not give up hope and turn to mush. There are days when I thought they had more fortitude than I.
I realize now that if I wanted dahlias galore, I should have started them inside in pots. As it was, the shipment of tubers that I ordered from an online vendor went into the ground in mid spring when the soil was warm enough to sustain them. Had I bought the tubers earlier and started them indoors, I would have been planting little dahlia seedlings instead of naked tubers. A head start might have offset some of the gloomy weather.
Craving a rainbow array of dahlias of various sizes and colors, I ordered a special mixed collection. Despite the rain, the second wave of COVID, and the weeds that grew as if hormonally enhanced, I waited for the day when I would see bursts of color throughout my front border. Finally buds appeared and as they swelled, so did my spirits.
And then the first five plants bloomed. All sported white blossoms.
White is alluring in the garden, but all-white was not what I had in mind for my dahlias. I decided to hurl an angry email at the company that apparently sent my rainbow array to someone else. Fortunately procrastination took hold long enough for the flowers on the sixth plant to open up. Chunky dark red blooms appeared on the stalks, followed by orange and yellow sunset-colored flowers on another plant. I still think I have too many white-flowered plants to call my dahlia collection “mixed”, but the problem is not bad enough to justify that angry email.
Now it is mid to late October and my dahlias are going strong, despite a few nights when the temperatures have descended into the forties. A few of the more reticent plants look like they are finally contemplating putting out their first blooms. I am hoping that the colorful dahlia fireworks will go off before the trick or treaters get here on Halloween. You never know.
Eventually, of course, a hard frost will arrive and all the dahlia stems will turn black and die. Being a practical gardener and an optimist, I will then lift the tubers from the ground, let them dry off for a few days on a piece of newspaper, and store them in a cool dry place for the winter. A little effort now will enable me to start my leftover tubers indoors in March, jump-starting next summer’s dahlias.
When the time comes, I will also order some new dahlias, but I will be smarter about what I select. Instead of opting for a pre-selected color mix, I will choose individual varieties in an array of colors. Barring mislabeling, that strategy should guarantee me the dahlia rainbow that I expected this year.
Like fans of perennial underdog sports teams, all gardeners hope for better things next year. I fully expect that next summer we will have a drought that will favor my dahlias and threaten to turn my hydrangeas into crispy critters. As an accomplished worrier, I know that changing up your garden worries each season is essential to successful adventures in horticulture.
In the meantime, if dahlias are on your mind, take a look at the selection at Swan Island Dahlias, PO Box 700, Canby, OR 97013; 1-800-410-6540; www.dahlias.com. You can even order tubers now for spring 2022 delivery
